Unstoppable Career Growth: How To Build a Professional Brand on LinkedIn

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Danielle Cobo: LinkedIn has become the go-to social media platform for professionals. Now, you may be thinking, I thought LinkedIn was a platform for job seekers, people looking for a job, and yes, that's how LinkedIn started. However, it's evolved a lot over the years and whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting out in your career, LinkedIn is a powerful tool to build your personal and professional brand.

It's a tool to help you advance your career in many ways. And today we're gonna be taking a deep dive into the strategies on how to use LinkedIn to advance your career, how to open up opportunities, how to build a comprehensive profile to develop your personal brand and much more. When I started my profile several years ago, gosh, when I first started out in my career 20 plus years ago, I set up a LinkedIn profile and I used it as a tool for looking for a job, and it was helpful. It helped explore some opportunities that I saw with job postings. I was able to connect with different people and expand my network, but I didn't truly understand how LinkedIn. Could attract opportunities that I didn't even know were out there. I had been with a company for five and a half years in the dental industry.

I was widely successful. I started my career in dental sales when I was 23 years old, and within five years I had earned four consecutive, sales achievement awards for top performance. And I wasn't looking for a job. In fact, I kind of neglected my LinkedIn profile. But what happened was as a recruiter had reached out to me, I received a notification in my email inbox that I had a message awaiting me in LinkedIn, and I'm so grateful that I set my LinkedIn profile up because what happened was is a recruiter had reached out to me.

she had told me about a job opportunity into medical aesthetics, and I went on the interview. I had no intentions on leaving my company, but I was like, Hey, why not explore this opportunity? It's in medical aesthetics. It's a fun industry. And so I went on the job interview. And I actually decided that it was a good opportunity to transition into an industry that I really wanted to be in, and I enjoyed the products that the company was representing.

And I ended up leaving my career in dental sales and transitioned into aesthetic sales. Now, that's where I spent my next 10 years of my career. And I would've never been in medical aesthetics if I hadn't set up my LinkedIn profile and had been open to receiving messages from recruiters. Now, fast forward 10 plus years later, when I had left a company that I had been with for seven years, I was leading a team for a medical aesthetic company, and it happened to be, I was in a, toxic work environment, so I decided to leave.

Well, what I first started going on LinkedIn. At first, I was looking for a job. I updated my LinkedIn profile. put together all of my experience and my sales awards and,built a comprehensive profile. But what I found with LinkedIn was so much more than I had originally thought. What I found with LinkedIn was an abundance of LinkedIn learning courses that I was able to take, as part of a premium member on personal branding, on job search strategies, on interview skills, on leadership development.

So the access to online trainings is extremely valuable when it comes to the premier membership. In addition to that, I started to follow posts on LinkedIn and started to follow a couple influencers or LinkedIn top voices, and I stumbled upon a LinkedIn Top Voice, Heather Monahan. And Heather was so vulnerable and transparent and motivating with her posts, and it really inspired me to take a risk early on in starting my business, actually, I had no intentions of starting a business.

It started with Heather's posts. had started to share her experience of working in corporate, how she had had a very successful year, career in corporate, however, She saw that there was so much more to what she could do, and I started to follow her post and I was like, wow, these posts are so inspiring.

And I started to engage on them. And then I started to say, well, what would it look like if I also use LinkedIn as an to build my professional and personal brand and inspire others? It was in the middle of the pandemic, the world. there was already so much going on in the world between the pandemic and the election.

It was just a lot of turmoil going on, and I wanted to use LinkedIn as a platform to inspire others to motivate others to, Share my insights on how to have a successful career in sales, how to show up as an influential leader and develop others. And so I started posting on LinkedIn and what I found was, is people started commenting and my community started to grow and grow and grow.

And people started to reach out to me and sharing how my post had inspired them or had given them hope or had helped provide them some insights into getting a job or, accelerating their career. And eventually what transpired was. People started to reach out to me and saying, Hey, could you hire, can I hire you to help me, get a job, write a resume, build my LinkedIn profile interview skills.

 either they were looking for a new job or they were looking to get promoted, and so what started as me looking for a job ended up transitioning into people hiring me to help them get a job. And through that experience I fell in love with helping others get their job. And then it transpired into people reaching out to me and saying, Hey, I've seen that you've had a successful career in medical sales.

Can I hire you for some sales coaching? And so then I started to expand my business with seals coaching, and then people in corporate started to reach out to me and they started to say, Hey, I saw that you had a successful career in corporate, but you've also built this, coaching and consulting and speaking business, and I wanna transition out of corporate as well.

Would you do some business consulting with me? And two and a half years later, here I am sitting hosting a podcast. I had just finished writing my book, the Grit Factor Breakthrough, the Seven Roadblocks, standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals. I have a thriving consulting business. I'm a speaker and a top voice on LinkedIn, and it all started.

Because I had updated my LinkedIn profile and I started to show up in building my personal brand, and through these steps of building my profile and working on developing my personal brand, I was able to understand this unique, Interest that I had in helping others achieve their goals and helping others see their unique strengths, their X factor, that maybe they don't see themselves in helping them see the full potential and possibilities that they have and how that can help them achieve their goals.

Through working with some of my clients, they've been able to develop. A greater level of confidence. They've gotten new jobs, they've been promoted within the organization, they've started businesses. I've had several clients who have, achieved top performance in their organization and have just wrapped up their President's club, trips, and it all started.

By just showing up on LinkedIn. So whether you, if you're looking for a job, you absolutely wanna be on LinkedIn. There's no doubt about that because 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn. So it's a huge opportunity to network with recruiters who are going to be looking for jobs for you, which that in itself is a huge benefit, but it's also an opportunity for networking.

So even if you're looking for a job, or even if you're not looking for a job, the opportunities for networking to expand your network is extremely valuable. By just showing up on LinkedIn within two and a half years, I was able to build my community from 2000 to just over 25,000 in two years.

Just by filling out a profile, by posting, a couple times a week, sharing advice, sharing insights, motivation, and it's built into something greater than I could have ever imagined. And it's opened up so many opportunities, for my business, my career, and the people that I've been able to connect with.

All over the world, people that have been on my podcasts have all been from connections and networking and building a community on LinkedIn. So if you're listening right now and you're going, mm, Danielle, I don't know, I'm happy in my career. if I have not said it enough or haven't convinced you enough, I just wanna share with you, like just at least go on LinkedIn.

Start following people. Start engaging and start commenting, and at least explore what you can find on LinkedIn. And as, I dive a little bit deeper into today's episode, I'm gonna be walking through how to build a comprehensive profile on LinkedIn, especially if you were looking for a new job or you're looking to possibly attract job opportunities.

Building a comprehensive profile is the first step. I've had several clients. I had one client recently where she had been laid off. She had been looking for a job for six months and applied to several jobs online, and she just was feeling stuck. She wasn't getting anywhere. when we started to work on her personal brand and we started to work on her resume and we started to work on her LinkedIn profile and build a job search strategy.

She was able to find a job within one month of working together, and she had been looking for a job for six months and now she is already, was able to find a job in one month, so extremely valuable. And then there was another client of mine who wasn't looking for a job. They were just kind of open to what was out there.

And, he had built a profile. We had worked on building a profile, building his professional brand, and within a month of this strategy that we worked on in building his professional brand, a recruiter reached out to him and I. Quickly, he accelerated through the interview process and was able to get a position, attract a job opportunity, and get a position two levels higher than he currently was, and exponentially increases income earnings, Again, if you're a job seeker, you definitely wanna be on LinkedIn.

If you're not looking for a job, but you just wanna see what's out there or possibly be open to opportunities, the first step is building your profile. So when you're looking at building a comprehensive profile, it first starts with, the first step is your profile pitcher. Your profile pitcher is the first.

Image that people see of your profile before they even click on your profile. They see your image and they see your name and your headline. Now with LinkedIn, what I often see is people that will take a photo of themselves, maybe they're at a wedding when they're all dressed up, and they'll crop themselves out of the picture, and then they'll upload it to LinkedIn.

I invite you to take that a step further. And get a professional headshot. You can either hire a photographer, you can have a friend, you wanna get in a suit, you can take a professional, you can have a friend take a picture of you. There's plenty of apps out there that can, Enhance the photo a little bit, touch up any imperfections.

There's also artificial intelligence tools where you can upload several photos of yourself and it will generate a headshot for you. if you're looking for even that tool, go ahead and include it in the show notes for you, but you definitely want to have a profile pitcher. It's extremely valuable. It's the first thing that people see, and the reality is, we make a assumption about people within the first 10 seconds, and it starts by how we show up and present ourselves.

So you definitely wanna have professional headshot. The next step is building your headline. Now LinkedIn, the headline automatically defaults to your most recent position, the job title. What I invite you to do is the headline is an area that you can utilize to show your value proposition. What I say by that is your value proposition statement.

When I'm working with clients, utilize the headline to optimize the s e o search engine optimization on their profile. So with the headline, we will walk through and look at what are some unique skillsets that they have, what are the jobs that they're applying to? What are the skillsets that particular job is looking at?

And what we'll do is we'll go through and we'll customize a headline. Optimize for seo, for the jobs that they're applying to or the jobs that they wanna attract or maybe just what, how they wanna build their professional and personal brand. So the headline is extremely, it's, like prime real estate, the profile photo, and then the headline.

Once people look at, and they make a first impression based off of the profile and the headline, next, they go to the background cover photo. So they'll click on your profile, then they look at the top of your profile and they work their way down. Your background cover photo. Is at the very top of your profile.

A lot of times when I'm working with clients for the first time, they will have either a picture of a sunset or they have a picture of whatever default images that are on LinkedIn, but this is an opportunity. To showcase different skill sets and also create and, elevate your personal brand. So when I'm working with clients, we will customize a background cover photo to put at the top of the profile that's unique.

That is attractive, It shows another area to showcase their talents or to emphasize a particular skillset that they wanna show. On their, profile as well. Then you move down to the summary. Now the summary can have up to 3000 characters. however, with the summary, I see a lot of people in the summary this kind of like an overview of your experience and what I see a lot of people do at the summary is either they'll just write a short little paragraph or they fill out the entire summary.

With a 3000 characters, it's very overwhelming, and a lot of people won't take the time to read it, so unfortunately, Most recruiters and hiring managers, and I say this from experience of being a hiring manager, we really only spend about, 15, 20, maybe a minute looking at resumes. We don't go into a deep dive.

We kind of scan through it and there's particular areas I hone in on a resume when I'm as a hiring manager for a sales team. There's kind of a key specific areas that I look for that I will coach my clients through. but. Just like a resume in your LinkedIn profile, you also want to have some white space.

So when I'm working with clients, we'll look at how do we optimize first, 
what jobs are they applying to, or what jobs do they wanna attract, or what are the specific skill sets that they wanna highlight for their personal and professional brand? Then we will create a summary section highlighting specific skill sets, optimize for seo O, and when I say optimize for seo, If you were looking for a job, when a recruiter goes into the search engine with LinkedIn and they say, I am looking for, a particular person with five to 10 years, let's say, outside sales experience.

So I'm looking for somebody with five to 10 years outside sales experience with X, Y, z particular skillsets. Because we've identified the jobs that this particular person is applying to, as well as, the particular skillsets that they have, we will optimize the summary section with search engine optimization keywords so that their profile shows up as top, that recruiter's search.

Again, it goes down to strategy. When you're looking for a job, then you're gonna move down to experience. So once you fill out the summary section, there's specific layouts that I'll work with my clients, where it's optimizing the s e o. There's, it's easy to read and follow, then we move down to experience.

So experience is a way of highlighting your professional experience. You wanna not only include a description of the particular role of each roles, but you also want to include maybe some achievements, awards, accolades that you've received during your time with that particular, with each particular company.

I always wanna start with a verb, an action. And then if you're in sales, you wanna use metrics and percentages. I can share with you because my background is as a hiring manager, as a sales for a sales team, when I would receive a resume and it would say, number one in the region, I would be a little skeptical because a lot of times the region includes maybe.

Seven to 20 people as a hiring manager, I wanna say national rankings, not region rankings. Also too, if you were in sales and you're saying, oh, well I've generated, or I would say I opened up five new accounts per year. Well, if the expectation for my company is 20 new accounts per year. But maybe five accounts in your company is exceeding the goal.

It doesn't translate as well. So I always say use metrics and use percentages and use rankings, especially if you're in sales. So when I go through with my clients, we'll go through experience. We'll look at the different roles that they're in. We look at the different jobs that they're applying to. We optimize each of the roles in their experience with SEO o keywords.

Again, we look at starting each of the highlights of what they've accomplished with verbs. We include metrics, we include percentages, to really highlight their.

Experience and their unique X factor that I say each person has. Then once you get your experience, you move down to education and certifications.

So, education is gonna be obviously the schools that you go to. certifications could be any trainings that you've received. it could be while I, currently, I, had just finished a training earlier this year on personality insights behavioral model, which is, Certification and personality assessments and communication skills, and improving self-awareness and improving emotional intelligence and collaboration within the workforce.

So you can add those certifications as well as another value add to your background in your experience. Then moving down to skills. Now you can have up to 50 targeted skills on your profile. You wanna ensure that these skills are aligned with the particular roles. If you are looking for a job, the particular roles that you're applying to, and if you're not looking for a job, the particular skillsets that are unique about you and your professional brand.

So when I'm working with clients, we hone in specifically on the skills that they've had in their particular roles that they've been in, but also how they translate into the new roles that they're applying to. I have a lot of clients who have said, I have experience in X, Y, Z industry. I have a little bit experience in another industry, and I want to actually transition into that industry full-time or spend some more time in it.

Then I say, okay, well let's remove the targeted skills that were from the industry you don't wanna work in anymore, because it's not relative. So with your skills, you could have up to 50 targeted skills, and you wanna ensure that they're relative to the positions that you're applying to. Next is on your profile projects and publications.
if there's any particular projects that you've been involved in, if you've been, if you have any publications on My Profile, you'll see different magazines that I've been in, featured in with links in those magazines as well. So, authority Magazine, women's Quarterly, all those publications and the links that are included in the publications portion as well.

Then recommendations. Recommendations are extremely valuable to add to have on your profile because it's other people vouching. For what you are highlighting on your profile. So if you have leadership experience and you've had experience leading teams, and you have people who recommend you as a leader, That supports what you're putting on your profile.

So recommendations are extremely valuable. I will say with recommendations I always give before I receive. So one of the goals I had set earlier this year, and sometimes I'm good at it and sometimes I forget quite honestly. but one of the goals that I set out earlier in the year was to write a recommendation once a week for somebody.

So if you do it once a week, that's 52 recommendations in the year. But could you imagine what happens when you give and you help other people? It's like what Bob Berg had said, the author of Go-Giver on one of the previous episodes. Like you give before you receive. If you always come from a kind giving heart, success will happen.
So recommendations. You wanna go ahead and, commit to giving before asking, but if you, can reach out to your previous coworkers, your colleagues, your managers, people that you've worked with to write recommendations, and that's extremely valuable in building your LinkedIn profile. Once you've built in your LinkedIn profile, then you go into strategy.

 So strategy is if you are looking for a job, if you are an entrepreneur and you're looking to grow your business, or maybe you want to build your professional brand, perhaps you wanna get a new job within your organization, promote to another level within your organization, but perhaps you don't have, consistent interactions with the decision maker, who might you be?

The decision maker who might be making the decision on whether you're gonna receive a job or not. Let me give a deeper example. Let's say for example, you are working for an organization you wanna promote into a higher leadership. Role. One of the decision makers is perhaps the VP or the C E O.

You don't interact with them on a consistent basis in person. However, you see that they're active on LinkedIn and you start to post on LinkedIn or you start to comment their LinkedIn comments. That is going to build awareness about who you are, and it's a way of. Networking. So it's extremely valuable no matter where you're at in your career.

To dive into the strategy on how to use LinkedIn. Now, the algorithms with LinkedIn are always changing and it's something that I actively, research on a consistent basis. I also take LinkedIn courses every year. also, with a LinkedIn expert on a consistent basis to ensure that I am, always in the no of some of the changes with the algorithms.
So I'm gonna talk. As an overview of some of the strategies, but when it comes to the details and the algorithms that's ever changing, so that's something that I work on with my clients as the algorithms evolve, and I get a little bit more specific with my clients because it's relative to where the LinkedIn algorithms are at that given time.
So let's talk strategy. Strategy to building your professional brand strategy. If you're an entrepreneur and you want to attract more, clients, maybe you're looking for a job, this is where the strategy is important. The first portion of strategy, the first step in strategy is, Identifying not only what are your unique skill sets, what's your X factor, what's your value proposition?

But more importantly, how do you communicate that with your community, with your network on LinkedIn? Well, that starts with developing a posting strategy. So specifically, for example, if you wanted to promote into a leadership role and you wanted to. Connect with the decision maker, and see the value that you have in your level of expertise on leadership.

You're gonna wanna post about leadership. So posting is, and it's not, similar to other platforms like Instagram and Facebook, but a little bit different cuz you're showcasing your leadership In this particular situation, you'd be showcasing your leadership skills in posting, you're wanting to post not every day.

But three to five times per week. for my clients that I've never posted before on LinkedIn, I say three times a week is a good way to start. And now the algorithms vary depending on the day and the time. so we go into a deep strategy sessions on the algorithm portion, but posting three days a week is a way of building your professional brand.

Specifically on how you want to be, like what do you want to be known for in your professional brand? We also work on, Helping them with creating color schemes and different, tools within Canva that we can use to build their professional brand. those are all the tools that I provide my clients with.

But if you're just looking to just get started, maybe it's. Posting a quote that you saw that inspired you and posting it on LinkedIn, and then writing a, caption as to what inspired that. what is it about that particular quote that inspired you? So the strategy first is posting. Then with each post you wanna include relevant hashtags.
Now, the hashtags that are trending always vary, but as a rule for thumb, you wanna include three to five hashtags. And hashtags that are relative to the post or hashtags that are relative to the people that, the different topics that if your potential customers or the people that are decision makers with an organization are following or relative to your industry.

So you wanna post consistently the specifics on the, there's specific days and times that always vary. You wanna include three to five trending hashtags and then you wanna network. So when I was looking for a job a couple years ago, before starting my business, I really honed in on building my network.

With recruiters in my industry as well as the hiring managers, so the VPs, national sales directors, and the CEOs of the organizations that I wanted to work for, I started to connect with them directly and start to foster and build relationships with these individuals. So if a job wasn't available when a job did become available, I was top of mind awareness because I had fostered that relationship and built it over time.
 I've had people do that with me when I've had job postings in the past, and I was a hiring manager. There's a lot of people that would submit their application through our online portal. Unfortunately, there was, well, I guess fortunately for me as a hiring manager, but there would be on average about 300 to 350 applications for the jobs that I would be posting, and I only would receive.

 Probably seven to 10 resumes, from our talent acquisition manager. So the resumes would be people would apply to the job, there'd be well over 300 to 350 applications. Then the automatic tracking system, matches the resume based off of what the job. Description is, and it goes through this match score.
So how many s e o keywords on your resume are matching with SEO O keywords on the job description using automatic tracking system. And then on average it would sift about 10% of those resumes, if not less. To the talent acquisition manager. The talent acquisition manager then sends the resumes to me, and I would get on average between seven to 10.

So majority of the time there would be talented, people. But I would never see their resume. And that's one of the challenges that I consistently hear from job seekers. And so what I, and a lot of times people would apply online, I would never see their resume. However, they would network with me on LinkedIn.

So I've seen the benefits of. As a hiring manager, hiring people, because they connected with me on LinkedIn, as well as I've seen the benefits with my clients. When we have built a strategy on how to build their community, their network, connect directly with recruiters in their industry, connect directly with the hiring managers as well.

So your strategy for building your personal brand is first, build a comprehensive profile. Second, you wanna build a strategy on your posting strategy, not only the key areas that you wanna be known for your brand, then you wanna dive deeper into that strategy with hashtags and the time of data post.

And then also you wanna expand your network. Now I know that may sound like a lot of work. But when I'm working with my clients, we will work on building their LinkedIn profile. We'll develop the strategy in about an hour, and I have so many tools that have helped them make it easier to optimize the SEO O keywords on their resume, on their LinkedIn profile, and then as well as, strategies to help build their professional and personal brand, which isn't as time consuming as it may seem when you're first starting out.

Now, I will say before you make any changes, any changes to your LinkedIn profile, you want to one step, and that is. Check your social selling index, and if you're not familiar with a social selling index, that's okay. Most people don't know what it is. But your social selling index is basically how LinkedIn measures your brand.

So it's a social selling index is it gives you a score and it says, okay, based on do you have a comprehensive profile? Is it optimized for SEO keywords? Are you connecting with the right people in your industry? Are you, engaging in conversations? LinkedIn is about. Building meaningful conversations.

And that's another strategy that I go into with my particular clients is how do we get on the radar with these particular decision makers? And it goes into the comment strategy, so commenting on specific key decision makers, their particular posts, and there's a strategy behind that. But your social selling index is a way that LinkedIn measures your brand presence.

And anything over a 70 is considered a good score. So you want over 70. Now keep in mind a 70 in, if somebody who's got 500 connections is very different than a 70 score when you've got 25, 30,000 connections. and also too, when you're checking your social selling index, there's a difference between.
 In your industry and in your network. So when you click on the link, You'll wanna be signed into your LinkedIn profile. You'll want to click on the social selling index link. What will happen is it will pop up a screen. It'll be your social selling index screen. if I remember correctly, on the left is gonna be the industry.

So based off of the people that you are connected to, based off of your profile, how do you rank among percentage wise, the top percentage in your industry? Now, for mine, in my industry is top 1%. Now my network percentage may be a little different. My network percentage is top 2%, and my social selling index score is a 76.

Now, the reason why there's a difference between industry and network is because there's a lot of people in my network that have. 200,000 followers in their community, in their network. So me having, just over 25,000 is a little bit different than somebody who's got a hundred thousand, 200,000 in their network.

So that's why if you're looking at your social selling index and you're seeing a difference between your industry and your network, that could be why. So again, you wanna have a social selling index above a 70. You wanna be in the top 5% for your industry in your network, and then it will break down.

Your social selling index will break down the different areas that you are, doing very well in your brand presence, and then areas to improve on as well. I will include a link in the show notes for your social selling index so that you can check it. So I invite you to do that. And then also, There was a lot to cover in today's episode on how to build a comprehensive LinkedIn profile, but I have something special for you.

I have a LinkedIn profile guide, so we'll walk you through step by step how to build a comprehensive profile, and if you write a review on the podcast and send a screenshot to. [email protected]. I'll include the email in the show notes. I will send you a free LinkedIn profile guide. So again, if you write a review on the profile, whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcast, you'd send a screenshot to grit factor danielle cobo.com.

Then I will send you a free LinkedIn profile guide. Now, if you're wondering. Grit factor. Where did that come from? Well, the podcast is going through a rebrand. So the podcast, the first 120 episodes has been the dream job with Danielle Cobo podcast. However, we're going through a rebrand and I'm really excited to share with you that.

My book, the Grit Factor Breakthrough, the Seven Roadblocks, standing between you and your goals is gonna be coming and releasing, at the end of this year. And we'll be available on Amazon. And with the release of the book, I am going to be rebranding the podcast to the grit factor. We're gonna be, bringing on some new guests, some bestselling authors, some people who have.

Overcome adversity and who have leveled up their professional and personal life. Some inspiring stories. So as we're going through a rebrand, I will be booking guests for next season, as well as I am going to be. Putting together, emails to come out. So if you're wanting to receive this, I'm gonna have the Grit Factor Monday Motivation with Danielle Cobo.

So every Monday I'm gonna be sending a very short email, but it will be your motivation to help you develop grit, resilience, and courage so that you can thrive in all areas of your life. I'll also be writing some blogs and articles. all, everything is gonna be around. How to develop grit, so in how you can achieve your goals.

So again, I will be rebranding the podcast, but very excited. And if you write a review on the podcast, you take a screenshot and you send it to [email protected]. You'll receive your free LinkedIn profile guide. Now, if you know somebody who is perhaps looking for a job, I invite you to share this episode with them.

As I've shared, there's a lot of value in having a LinkedIn profile. So for somebody looking for a job, this is the episode for them. If you're an entrepreneur, if you know somebody who's an entrepreneur and they're looking to build their business, setting up a LinkedIn profile is extremely valuable. So you'll wanna go ahead and email, send this episode to them as well.

And then, of course, if you're looking to get promoted in your organization or just looking to build your professional and personal brand, if you know somebody that is, share this episode and thank you so much for tuning in and create an intentional day.